I know that the gunboat is on the horizon and so is the silencer. I am also aware that veterans wasn't that long ago, but its been a while (exactly since the x7 nerf......COUGH COUGH) since I've seen a real imperial presence on the table. Yes, I know a few particularly good players have snuck one or two squads up there on the tournament scene, but its not nearly as much as pre wave 8. Rebels and scum, which were already the far superior factions got two of the best releases as of late in wave 11. Our last decent releases was whenWave 10 gave us the striker, which was balanced to everything except the preexisting content that was already considered op (jump master, biggs, k wing, fenn rau. The upsilon made a ripple for a hot second then was never heard from again. So how will imperials fare in the near future? Not well.

Gunboat: I personally think that the gunboat could be absolutely fantastic in a different meta considering it has access to slam. (Advanced) Slam+Reload is good on paper but it takes away long range scanners and guidance chips hurting its ability to alpha strike and also hit consistently and safely. It also lacks a turret in a meta that favors them heavily.

Phantom 2: Rebels might just be getting an extremely cheap carrier for crew and command.(Biggs makes his agility 3 [R3A2], focuses for free and turns it into an evade with jan ors for 16 points or so)

Resistance Bomber: This ship annoys me. Not just a little either. I chose to be an imperial player due to their high agility maneuverable ship. They were a high skill bar faction largely dependent on maneuvering skill which granted huge reward if played smartly and was just bad if approached recklessly. Now, I consistently find myself playing SF's and defenders since any ship with under 4 health, will die way too fast from bombing shenanigans. Now, Rebels can launch those "range one" into swarms or directly into aces for damage without die at no risk to themselves because of the distance of the launch. Now I know that this is an all faction thing, but the resistance bomber is clearly the intended platform and it works best against standard imperial strategies. Also TURRETS. Here is another one.

FFG: Hey guys! Do you like turret primaries?

Players: No, they fit poorly in a game about maneuvering. Secondaries are ok though. The secondaries have caveats like range requirements that make positioning important or the damage output is poor due to action requirements or secondary uses such as ion.

FFG: Did you say add 6 more and make secondary turrets deal consistent strong damage against ALL targets?

This is a long standing gripe a lot of people have with the game, but seriously, you had it figured out with the mobile arc. That excitement that comes from trying to shake a tailing enemy ship and outmaneuvering them doesn't matter when you can just shoot them without strategy or risk. No one likes bombs anymore, no one liked turrets in the first place. Stop giving out turrets and bombs like its halloween.

Tie Silencer: golly gee, an interceptor that has some extra health and a system for thirty points or so. This sounds a lot like an E wing to me. Oh wait, it has boost so its different. Sort of. It loses evade and has no astromech slot so is immediately worse. yay.

In conclusion, the imperial faction is more dead than the residents of alderran.

...at least your salt was well penned and has depth.

?

The Tie Silencer with Kylo will have the ability to kill Miranda under its shields, can use adva sen to never be in anyone's arc/never close to bombs/ can hoard close to 50 points and is PS 11.

In short its going to be over powered and destroy the current meta, flys better then the pre-nerf Whisper and with an ability that can ether make you not shot or ps0, can fly with RAC/Vader or a palp shuttle along with a stupid good title. Or you just take 5 bombers with unguilded rockets or harp missiles dropping something like 20 damage with splash damage not to even say the gunboat which will be able to slam/reload and never run out of missiles.

Yup the Imps are dead.

If you would like to mail me your collection I wont say no :-p

5 hours ago, rafcpl6868 said:

This is a long standing gripe a lot of people have with the game, but seriously, you had it figured out with the mobile arc.

I really don't like the mobile arc either. It's basically a Turret without the draw backs of Autothrusters. The calls for Mobile Arc is the way turrets should have always been done kind of annoy me. The mobile arc is actually super clunky design wise. It doesn't fit with the original elegant design IMO.

6 hours ago, Cubanboy said:

The Tie Silencer with Kylo will have the ability to kill Miranda under its shields, can use adva sen to never be in anyone's arc/never close to bombs/ can hoard close to 50 points and is PS 11.

In short its going to be over powered and destroy the current meta, flys better then the pre-nerf Whisper and with an ability that can ether make you not shot or ps0, can fly with RAC/Vader or a palp shuttle along with a stupid good title. Or you just take 5 bombers with unguilded rockets or harp missiles dropping something like 20 damage with splash damage not to even say the gunboat which will be able to slam/reload and never run out of missiles.

Yup the Imps are dead.

If you would like to mail me your collection I wont say no :-p

While I wish I could agree with you and your somewhat understandable logic, we're getting to the point where you can't even stick one hit from 3 dice anymore, so Kylo's ability isn't going to matter. Yes he will fly well, but bombs and turrets almost don't care. And no evade hurts in this case.

Gunboat slam and reload with PS7 only look utterly underwhelming.

[Clutches card folder]

Hi there, I'm from the church of Scimitar Sqdn and the Latter Day Gamma Vets. Have you heard the good news about TIE Bombers?

I used to think FFG gave a toss about Imperials.

I don't anymore.

2 hours ago, NakedDex said:

[Clutches card folder]

Hi there, I'm from the church of Scimitar Sqdn and the Latter Day Gamma Vets. Have you heard the good news about TIE Bombers?

LWF bomber and shuttles are awesome, it really took me back to my early days of X-Wing to fly 5 with LWF and Unguided.

6 health and 3 agility (in most circumstances these days) and 3 attack dice (most of the time) for 20 points is stupid fun, even with the odd dial.

I ran an unguided LWF crack Tomax for a couple months and did pretty well, gosh I love bombers.

10 hours ago, rafcpl6868 said:

I am also aware that veterans wasn't that long ago, but its been a while (exactly since the x7 nerf......COUGH COUGH) since I've seen a real imperial presence on the table.

So put them on the **** table. Be the change you want to see in the game.

I flew triple Defenders to a 3-1 record last week in store tournament featuring a lot of meta lists, and I am by no means a good X-Wing player or Defender pilot. I can count on one extended middle finger the amount of times x7 didn't trigger across all four games. If I can get results with them, anyone can - they just choose not to.

I went 4-0 with Bombers against TLT lists, Kylo/sf lists, and more. Imperials aren't dead, they're just not being picked up because they're not spectacularly OP.

15 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

Imperials aren't dead, they're just not being picked up because they're not spectacularly OP.

This.

1. Imperials are balanced.

2. Scum and Rebels have OP.

Where's the rest of the FAQ FFG?

My high school was a boarding school. At dinner, we used to "trick" others by loosening the top of the salt shaker so that when they tried to salt their food, the top would come off and you'd have an entire shaker's worth of salt in your stew/mash potatoes/burger, rendering it inedible...

...and they still had less salt than this post :-/

1 minute ago, Darth Rubi said:

My high school was a boarding school. At dinner, we used to "trick" others by loosening the top of the salt shaker so that when they tried to salt their food, the top would come off and you'd have an entire shaker's worth of salt in your stew/mash potatoes/burger, rendering it inedible...

...and they still had less salt than this post :-/

Which in turn pales to the Rebel salt of yesteryear.

Which, granted, was deserved.

It seems like FFG don't do balancing/playtesting very well.

So people honestly think stuff like this isnt going to be decent?

^PS isn't high enough

1 hour ago, Hannes Solo said:

^PS isn't high enough

Ok....so use VI.

Guess im just an optimist about a ship with all the best upgrades besides a bomb or turret. The only way people would say the Tie Silencer isnt dead on arrivial is if it were even more broken than it already could be. What did yall expect...regen, 10hp, 2 bomb upgrades, missiles, and a turret? Go play Miranda then.

The Silencer and Gunboat are going to be just fine.

I want to make a fleet with a Silencer and two Gunboats. Preferably not Kylo. I really like him but at his price point if I want to use more than two ships I won't take him.

honestly, the resistance bomber is far too balanced to warrant any complaint

from what we know, they have only two special bombing shenanigans and one of them isn't even "Special"

1. Trajectory Simulator (system upgrade, not ship specific)

2. uber extra munitions (which does nothing to change how it drops its bombs)

Trajectory simulator can not only be avoided (contrast with ASLAM ACTION bombs), but the ship caps at ps 7 with no ept slot

the ship cannot take sabine on itself and also has no means of improving its garbage two dice PWT (re: no Twin Laser Turret)

Don't get me wrong, I wholly agree that the PWT is a *** mechanic that doesn't belong in this game, but the Resistance Bomber is honestly kind of crap when you stack it up against Miranda or even Nym. It is EASILY the "worst" rebel bomber by a massive margin

also completely agreed about the silencer. The thing seems boring as all **** next to the glorious gunboat

11 hours ago, Cubanboy said:

The Tie Silencer with Kylo will have the ability to kill Miranda under its shields, can use adva sen to never be in anyone's arc/never close to bombs/ can hoard close to 50 points and is PS 11.

In short its going to be over powered and destroy the current meta, flys better then the pre-nerf Whisper and with an ability that can ether make you not shot or ps0, can fly with RAC/Vader or a palp shuttle along with a stupid good title. Or you just take 5 bombers with unguilded rockets or harp missiles dropping something like 20 damage with splash damage not to even say the gunboat which will be able to slam/reload and never run out of missiles.

Yup the Imps are dead.

If you would like to mail me your collection I wont say no :-p

Ok, can you tell me how Corran would perform with thrusters instead of regen, no double tap and no evade?? Thats exactly what Kylo is. You have to be logical here. Like the OP said we have a direct comparison available with the ewing (same cost same stats) and it does not perform.

Kylo's ability is awesome but not on the Silencer. It's a ship that does not want to get hit... IMO it would have been perfect if it was "on attack" or just a regular action. Like it is now Kylo on the silencer is almost just a generic pilot.

And the 5 bombers? They keep winning tournaments and play a major role in the meta...?

Gunboat, i will wait for a more complete preview to judge. Based on the info we have now it seems to be a good ship but not on par with whats performing in the current meta.

5 minutes ago, Thormind said:

Ok, can you tell me how Corran would perform with thrusters instead of regen, no double tap, no evade...

...a higher native PS, more health, more repositioning options, a tech slot and the ability to cripple his opponent through shields if he (or a wingman) lands a crit after taking damage?

Probably not to bad, to be honest.

Love? I mean, I see disdain if anything.

FFG is making choices in a gamestate (and not meta... there is a difference) where Imperials already struggle, that make it even harder for them to exist. They refuse to give new or unique mechanics to Imperials (we had the coordinate action for ourselves for the whole wave after it was given to us. Now it's not unique anymore, and the rebels have it better... yaay), but they don't seem to have the same restriction with Scum or Rebels.

"-The imperial faction identity is based on high agility arc-dodgy ships.... but scum doesn't have one, so let's give them the Best of these"
- Yeah, okay, but shouldn't we give then something for the imperials, like regen, or something like that?
- Nope, f#ck that."

Yeah we got 1 mediocre turret carrier, which can do little else but be a TLT carrier. Oh, it's also an Ace hunter, in a meta where those don't exist. That doesn't really help squad diversity. It's not a toolbox ship, like rebels and scum regularly get. Too little, too late.

Everything we get is balanced, many of us keep saying, but that does f#ck all in a game where no other faction is balanced. We've been going months and waves past the release of the last FAQ that neutered imperials, months and waves that only made the rebels and scum stronger.

So far, the situation is the following:
- The imperial upgrade pool is the smallest, dwarfed by a faction younger by 6 waves, along with the lack of a faction specific upgrade.
- The imperial playstyle (high agility, low hull ships, arc-locked ships) are systematically countered by mechanics strongly present in the game, with both Scum and Rebels having multiple access to powerful PWT-s, bombers, unique bomb mechanics, usually rocking a pretty hefty upgrade bar as well, with some bull underpriced ship.
- Older imperial releases get worse with each new wave, much faster than their Rebel and Scum counterparts, due to their limited upgrade options.
- And the biggest of them all: NONE OF THIS SEEMS LIKE IT'S GOING TO CHANGE.

The problem is deep. With dial creep the old imperial ships often don't live up to their "maneuverable" status by today's standards, red dice creep made it nigh impossible to hit with 2 attack ships (most of the imperial roster), and the above mentioned upgrade problem isn't getting solved any time soon.

Even if the FAQ gets published, and the JM5K is nerfed into the ground, even if the bomb meta is kept at bay with erratas and nerfs, the faction will still bleed from many wounds, and will be defeated by the next "Ship of the wave with a cool mechanic", inevitably on the rebel or scum side of space.

Even if a ship gets fixes in other boxes, it will soon lead to the imperial ship's upgrade bar filling up before the problem is fixed. For an example look no further than the Punisher.

2 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

This.

1. Imperials are balanced.

2. Scum and Rebels have OP.

Where's the rest of the FAQ FFG?

It's interesting to look at the various ships of each faction and see how useful they are, or have been, compared to each other faction. Imperial currently has a place for almost every ship <glares at TIE Punisher>, and while some of their ships dominated an archetype for a while (Defender and Phantom, primarily), there's been a relatively gentle ebb and flow to what is top choice and what supports/fills. Even now, the humble TIE Fighter still has a spot in many lists, and I've seen Alpha Interceptors being used as aggressive blockers recently.

Compare that to both Rebel and Scum, and it's considerably different. There are swathes of ships that are sacrificed to the meta scrapheap; some immediately, others as waves progress. E-wings are dead in the water, and B-wings are as rare as a non-Biggs T65. U-wings never really took off (ironically) and even the idea of a Z95 as a simple filler died. On the Scum side, there's almost a longer list of ships that aren't competitive than those that are.

The difference here is that the ships that from those factions that are competitive are utterly meta warping. So much so that not only are they forcing out relatively balanced recent Imperial releases like the /sf out of the competitive scene, but even some of their own faction's ships that would in themselves be very strong against the same Imperial lists. The Lancer and the YT2400 are great examples of this; they're both still very strong ships, but neither are considered a "better choice" over dumping the same number of points into Nym/Miranda/Dengar. This is compounded by the fact that While Dash and Asajj are usually great choices, they're both worse against Nym/Miranda/Dengar than... well, more Nym/Miranda/Dengar.

In a way, I feel really bad for players who only use Rebel or Scum. I've always bounced around between factions but I've found myself sticking to Imperial for a long time now as I've watched the diversity and flair get sucked out of both Rebels and Scum <awaits inevitable "but Palp" comment>. Their identities in terms of play style have borderline merged at this stage which is really sad, and especially ironic considering the latest hero for both factions flies the same ship for each...

But Palp?

Ok just kidding I only play Imps.

It's like ripping off a band-aid! The relief of the "but Palp" being over already is so good...

...do it again...

But Palp?